Land ice and climatic change : An introduction

ABSTRACT

Land ice plays an important role in the earth's climate system. Climatic variations on longer time scales are wll documented by the extent of the large northern hemidphere ice sheets. End moraines, erratic boulders, etc. have learned us a ot about the timing and severeness of ice ages. On a smaller scale, mountain glaciers also serve as very sensitive indicators of climatic changes. In this lecture an outline is given on the aspects of glaciers and ice sheets that are particularly important with regard to climatic change. After a general introduction a few very simple mathematical models describing ice sheets and glaciers will be discussed to give a feeling for orders of magnitude. In the last section the potential contribution of glaciers and ice sheets to sea - level rise is discussed in connection with the greenhouse warming. (AU)